A Programming Interface for Supporting IP Traffic Processing (original) (raw)

1999

Abstract

There are many possible applications for network elements which support packet routing along with programmable packet manipulation. The goal is to design a programmable network element which provides the right “building blocks” for programming a variety of applications while providing good performance and a powerful programming interface. We explore an approach where a “fast path” component called a dispatcher (implemented in an OS kernel or in hardware) performs common packet processing tasks on behalf of programs running on the network element. The goal of this approach is to perform the processing of most packets within the dispatcher, while sending only few packets to the programs. Currently, the dispatcher can perform network address translations, TCP sequence number adjustments, and TCP window size adjustments on behalf of the programs. Additional dispatcher functionality such as packet queueing and scheduling is planned. This paper focuses on the programming interface for the dispatcher.

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